On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Diego Novillo <dnovi...@google.com> wrote: > On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 09:59, Michael Matz <m...@suse.de> wrote: > >> I don't see how that is much easier to parse compared to >> i_1 = k_1 + m_1 >> j_1 = func (arg1, arg2) > > Well, it would make the parser almost trivial to implement. But you > have a point, the only structurally complex objects we need to parse > are type declarations. Everything else should have very uniform > syntax. > >> The nice thing with tuples is that there's always only one operator, and >> hence no ambiguity in precedence that needs to be resolved or explicitely >> encoded via a list structure. > > That's true. > >> Or is the format also intended to be able to represent GENERIC, i.e. >> deeply nested structures? > > No, just gimple.
IMHO, ideally we would have a syntax that is human readable and human writable. S-expressions are not as easy to read for me as something that resembles C. Related subject: Is it possible to have a formal grammar of some kind for, say, bison? It would be nice if we can generate different tools from one grammar, e.g. a GIMPLE front end, a syntax checker, maybe static analyzers, etc. If you make a reader that already constructs the gimple data structures, it will be harder to construct multiple tools on top of it that are independent of libbackend. Ciao! Steven
